Agent 34 (Book 1)

4. What a charming team you have

So, I'd like to start off by apologizing for the long wait. It was never my intention to take this long to start updating again. At the time I'd had every intention of continuing to keep to the schedule of once a week, though unfortunately, a lot of things started happening in my personal life that just kept affecting me and my writing.

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, but for one, my childhood dog passed away unexpectedly at the end of January. It was a shock to my entire family because he'd been completely fine and then overnight just took a turn for the worse. And then, around two to three weeks later, a member of my family tried to commit suicide . . . so yeah. Things have not been great. And then, of course, there's the whole pandemic going around, though luckily no one in my family has been affected by it. We are all under self-quarantine but we are fine. I wish everyone the best in dealing with the pandemic and hope that for anyone dealing with the worst, that you stay strong.

Some good news out of all this; my college classes all got switched to online and I can do them at my pace, which hopefully means I'll have more time to update my stories in the coming months. My spring break got extended by a week to give the college professors time to prepare for the online classes, so I now have a longer spring break (although I can't go anywhere) which in turn, also means more time to update. And I did adopt another dog about a week ago now. I'd always wanted another dog, regardless of the fact that we'd already had three (in my opinion you can never have too many dogs) and I'm still absolutely heartbroken over the death of my childhood dog, but the new (slightly devilish) hyperactive Chihuahua that we adopted has been a very welcome new addition to our family. We adopted him from a shelter, he's around two years old, and he'd been at that particular shelter since the beginning of November, but before that he'd been at another shelter so we really have no idea just how much of his life he'd spent in shelters. He's very hyper, a troublemaker, absolutely crazy, and has literally no fear. We named him Meeko, like the raccoon from the Disney movie Pocahontas (all our dogs are or have been named after Disney sidekicks thus far) and maybe I'll post some pictures of him on Instagram later.

Thank you all for your patience and again, I apologize for the long wait. Catching the Storm will also be updated very soon. And sorry for the super long author's note and I totally understand for those of you who chose not to read it.

Anyway, Enjoy!

Everly's POV

Zero practically slammed the door behind me when I stepped out of his office. The secretary shot me a glare for putting Zero in a foul mood and leaving her to deal with him. Really though, he was always in a foul mood.

I stood outside Zero's office for a moment, my mind whirling over everything I had just been told. Mainly though, I was wondering what about this mission he was hiding from me and why.

"I see you're just as pleasant to deal with as you think I am," A familiar voice spoke up. I turned my head to Ninety-eight who was leaning against the wall next to me. Still glaring at me, too.

I rolled my eyes and began walking away. I didn't have time for this. "It's not a matter of thought," I said to him when I noticed he was following me.

"I am not working with you," He told me bluntly.

"Great," I replied. "So just stay out of my way and I'll stay out of yours and when I find your missing team member, I may or may not give you a call."

He walked in front of me and came to a stop, glaring down at me as if this whole situation was somehow my fault. I tried to go around him but he just stepped in my path every time.

I let out a long sigh. "It's going to be much harder for you to look for your teammate if you're missing an eye."

His eyes narrowed further. "Is that a threat?"